There was a secret concerning Xi Mengfu that was almost never discussed openly.
But those presently in Precious Splendor Palace were all at the very highest levels of the Xia Kingdom. Naturally, they all knew...
When Xi Mengfu was born, he had six toes on one foot. His birth parents saw him as a deformed monster and threw him straight into the river.
He happened to be rescued by a boatman.
The boatman was a widower who had lived alone on his boat all his life. Unconcerned with gossip and idle talk, he adopted the child.
But good times did not last long. When the boy reached seven years old—
One day, a passenger on the boat saw his six toes and assumed he carried demon blood. He wanted to bind the boy and feed him to a Ferocious Beast.
When the boatman tried to stop him, he was beaten to death alive.
Amid the chaos, the boy jumped into the river and escaped, then ran to report the matter to the authorities.
The man who had beaten the boatman to death claimed that he had been eliminating a demon, and that one who sheltered the Demon Race deserved to die.
The child, then still called Xi San'er, stripped himself naked in the courtroom and asked the adults present where, exactly, he looked like a demon.
That official was a reasonable man, and sentenced the murderer to a lawful execution.
But what to do with Xi San'er became a difficult problem.
The boatman was already dead.
After great effort, they found his biological father, but the man adamantly refused to admit that he had fathered such a thing.
With no other choice, the official raised the child himself, taking him in as a household servant.
Yet those days did not